Children with heart defects less active than others, Canadian study says

Friday

Oct 26, 2007 at 12:01 AM

QUEBEC CITY, Quebec — Children born with congenital heart defects do remarkably well after surgery to repair the vital organ, but they and their parents are often so gripped with anxiety that the children shy away from physical activity, according to a new Canadian study.

ANDRE PICARD

QUEBEC CITY, Quebec — Children born with congenital heart defects do remarkably well after surgery to repair the vital organ, but they and their parents are often so gripped with anxiety that the children shy away from physical activity, according to a new Canadian study.

Their sedentary lifestyle, which is neither necessary nor recommended, risks driving up their chances of cardiovascular disease later in life, so it must be addressed as an integral part of follow-up care, researchers said.

"We need to get the message out that fragility is not an issue," Pat Longmuir, a researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, said in an interview.

"All children benefit from physical activity."

The research, presented this week at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Quebec City, involved 24 children aged 5 to 11. They were all born with a single ventricle, meaning their hearts have only one pumping chamber instead of two.

Since the early 1990s, when surgical techniques changed, these children have flourished. But cardiologists and cardiac nurses noticed that, despite their good health, many cardiac kids were inactive.

Longmuir, who conducted the research as part of her PhD thesis, decided to interview the children, along with their parents, about their perceptions of physical activity.

She found that the children in the study group were active, on average, less than 30 minutes a day.

That is well below the 90 minutes daily recommended in Canada's Physical Activity Guides for Children and Youth.

"They are actually less active than 'normal' kids who do nothing," Longmuir said.

She said this is a real concern because, with only half a functioning heart, these children will be much more susceptible to the damage caused by obesity, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

"We need to get them interested in sport and physical activity at a young age because it will be a really important factor in them staying healthy," Longmuir said.

While it is generally assumed that it is the parents who are frightened, the research, which was funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, revealed that children themselves had lingering fears.

Children with congenital heart defects usually undergo a series of operations, at a few months of age, at age 3 and again around 5. About one-third of them also suffer strokes.

The surgery and the strokes leave not only physical scars, but psychological ones.

"Some of the kids said to me: 'I don't want to hurt my heart.' They really worry about suffering again," Longmuir said.